Diana Fleischman

Diana Fleischman

“”We are all eugenicists.

—Diana FleischmanDo You Believe That?

“”I don't bang on about trans on Twitter almost at all because I think it gets disproportionate attention relative to the harm it's causing (and I'll expand on this at some point in writing) but even pro-trans rhetoric says being trans is terrible for wellbeing.

—Diana Fleischman

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Diana Santos Fleischman (1981–) is an evolutionary psychologist, eugenicist, pro-natalist, anti-vegan and utilitarian who promotes "genetic enhancement" (a euphemism for eugenics). She is a transphobe and supporter of polyamory/polygamy and human biodiversity (HBD). Fleischman was a speaker at the far-right pro-natalist Natal Conference in 2023. She has written for Quillette.

Background

Fleischman has German-Jewish ancestry on her father's side and was born in Brazil. She obtained a PhD in evolutionary psychology at the University of Texas at Austin and did postdoctoral research at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the University of North Carolina Medical School at Chapel Hill. She was formerly (2011-2020) a lecturer in psychology at the University of Portsmouth, England.

She is currently a Research Assistant Professor of Psychology at University of New Mexico. In 2023, Fleischman on social media commented, "I left academia so I can say whatever I like here now". Fleischman describes herself as "unabashedly utilitarian. "It comes from my experience with pleasure and pain, and then just extending that out with rationality and computation."

Fleischman has published over 30 peer-reviewed articles on evolutionary psychology, animal ethics, eugenics and sex differences.

Views

Polygamory

Dubbed the "Polyamorous Professors", Fleischman and her husband Geoffrey Miller are an openly polyamorous couple meaning they have romantic and/or sexual relationships with multiple partners at the same time. Fleischman and Miller have discussed polyamory in numerous interviews and on podcasts.

An article on Fleischman in the Prospect Magazine (2023) notes:

Brazilian-born Fleischman, who grew up in the US, has left the UK, where she lectured at the University of Portsmouth, to join Miller in New Mexico. Together they have had a baby — Vivian — with another on the way. Have Fleischman’s views on polyamory changed? “I wouldn’t be happy if [Miller] was consistently seeing somebody. He has a lot of stuff to do here at home!” she says, laughing again. “But if he had the weekend away,” she continues, “I don’t care. So we’re still probably poly, and probably will be in the future. But our relationship is incredibly stable at the moment.”

Polygamy

Fleischman has defended polygamy (the practice of having more than one wife or husband at the same time).

Eugenics

“”This is Fleischman’s work in a nutshell, to convince you that social problems have a genetic basis and that eugenic policies are the right tool to fix them. Central to her argument is that you’re already on her team, making reproductive choices to steer the makeup of our human population towards the top of a universal human hierarchy.

—Keira Havens

Fleischman is a staunch proponent of eugenics. In 2021, Fleischman coauthored a paper, "Can ‘Eugenics’ be Defended?", with Peter Singer and three other academics. In 2023, she authored a pro-eugenics article on her blog which was widely promoted on social media, "You're Probably a Eugenicist". The article was republished by Colin Wright (a transphobe affiliated to the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine and Manhattan Institute). Flesichman's article was also crossposted on the Effective Altruism Forum. She presented a talk on eugenics at an invite-only event named Hereticon in 2022.

She has discussed her views on eugenics and sex on Razib Khan's podcast. She is a self-described pro-natalist and consultant for an embryo-selection start-up and has been quoted as saying she only encourages "smart and conscientious people" to reproduce.

Fleischman's and her coauthors ideas about eugenics have been criticised by academic Robert A. Wilson in his paper "Eugenics Offended".

HBD

See the main article on this topic: Racialism

Fleischman has supported human biodiversity (HBD) calling it "biologically sound" and argues for genetic racial differences. She supports the pseudoscientific racialist research of white nationalist Bo Winegard. Fleischman was flirting with HBD and positively referencing Winegard's writings on race as early as 2017. Her viewpoint on race and intelligence is harder to pin down, although she has retweeted race and IQ blog posts by hereditarians.

Pro-natalism

Fleischman is a former anti-natalist who once believed human procreation is unethical but did a 180 degrees turn after changing her view on human overpopulation. She went from arguing there are too many humans to too few and she now believes the world is underpopulated. Her view changed sometime before July 2016 after watching a lecture by Toby Ord.

Flesichman has two daughters. She has appeared on Simone and Malcolm Collins podcast "Based Camp" to discuss embryo selection and prenatal screening.

She attended and spoke at the far-right Natal Conference in Austin, Texas with the Collinses and many other controversial figures from the far-right including "Raw Egg Nationalist".

Transphobia

Fleischman has made unambiguously transphobic comments on social media and in interviews. One such example is her criticism and misrepresentation of being "pro-trans":

Them: Being transgender is associated with abuse, discrimination, severe mental illness, possible infertility, difficulty finding a partner and the medicalization of your entire life

Also them: And that's a good thing, actually.

She claims that being transgender is "terrible for wellbeing".^{Do You Believe That?}

Immigration

An immigrant to the US, Fleischman has described herself as "fairly pro-immigration". Her support for immigration seems to be tied to her pro-natalism and the fact she encourages countries with low fertility rates to increase net-migration. Fleischman has made comments sympathetic to "open borders".

Pedophilia

Based on James Cantor's writings, Fleischman has sympathy for pedophiles who do not engage in sex with children.

Fleischman has defended Milo Yiannopoulos from pedophilia accusations:

...saying he "endorsed pedophilia" is simply not true.

This is doubtful to say the least considering what Yiannopoulos actually said.

From ostrovegan to critic of veganism

Fleischman eating oysters

Ostroveganism

Fleischman experimented with flexitarianism before allegedly becoming a vegan at 27, having read Peter Singer's book Animal Liberation in May 2008. However, her definition of veganism was controversial as she was eating bivalves. This type of veganism has been termed ostroveganism.

In 2013, Fleischman wrote a two part article on her blog titled "The Ethical Case for Eating Oysters and Mussels". Fleischman said she was eating mussels and oysters so identified as an ostrovegan. Her main argument that it is ethical to eat oysters and mussels is based on her claim that bivalves do not feel pain and are therefore non-sentient:

My conclusion: Bivalves do not have hardware or response consistent with the ability to feel pain. Because they have no brain, or central processing unit for stimuli, there is no ‘there’, there. Just like a disembodied finger, there is no place for sensations to be aggregated into responses or changes in adaptive decision making.

Although Fleischman repeats this claim on her main website, it has been disputed. The moral philosopher Josh Milburn has categorized oysters as plausibly sentient non-human animals (NHAs) and has suggested that a precautionary principle is appropriate regarding their consumption.

So-called ostroveganism is rejected by the majority in the vegan community as bivalves are classified as animals that possess ganglia. Only a minority have defended ostroveganism.

Fleischman was banned from the vegetarian forum veggieviews in 2014 for promoting consumption of mussels. She has also supported insect farming, commenting "I think farmed insects might have a good life".

Critic of veganism and vegetarianism

Fleischman changed her diet and gave up ostroveganism in the late 2010s. She holds a utilitarian view on meat eating, she is not concerned with individual experience but the overall suffering footprint. In 2020, she wrote an article arguing that people could reduce their "suffering footprint" rather than going vegan by eating red meat and avoiding fish, eggs, and chicken:

How might consumption of fish, eggs, and chicken, to the exclusion of beef and pork, cause a greater suffering footprint? A suffering footprint is calculated both by animal size and quality of life. Chickens and farmed fish are smaller animals, which means that for each animal bred, caged, and slaughtered, we get far fewer meals.

Fleischman currently advocates an omnivorous diet and eats red meat and dairy herself, now describing veganism as being "difficult" and vegans as being "very intolerant and purist". In another article critical of veganism, Fleischman goes on to bash vegans as "food purists" and says she became disillusioned with veganism because of their "black and white thinking".

Fleischman does not tell people to stop eating meat but eat animals that have a less suffering footprint:

I wasn't telling people to stop eating meat, I was telling them to eat animals that suffer less to produce meat. A kg of chicken is 66 days of suffering relative to pork 7.5 days or beef 1.9 days- I was making a reducitarian not vegetarianism argument.

She has argued that eating beef is more ethical than eating chicken because it kills fewer animals per gram of meat. She has commented that "animals don’t care whether we label ourselves vegetarian. I can help reduce suffering much more by convincing five people to give up chicken and fish than I can by convincing one person to become vegetarian."

Fleischman has described vegetarians as being "more neurotic, anxious and depressed than nonvegetarians".

In a 2021 video, Fleischman and white nationalist Bo Winegard criticized vegans as virtue signallers and described vegans as the most hated group of people on the planet with drug addicts.

In-vitro meat

By the 2020s, Fleischman was supporting in vitro meat.

Misleadingly, Fleishman in the article(s) do not mention the use of fetal bovine serum (FBS) in the production of in vitro meat. The production of in vitro meat requires a growth agent to support cell growth which is usually foetal bovine serum obtained from the fetus of slaughtered pregnant cows.

Links to the far-right

Despite her Jewish ancestry and pro-immigration outlook — Fleischman is connected to far-right and anti-immigration activists through her support for eugenics and pro-natalism. She has defended white nationalists and immigration-restrictionists attending the Natal Conference that she spoke at including defending white nationalist coverage of the conference by American Renaissance.

Wikipedia

In September 2024, Fleischman complained after an anonymous editor added she "espouses eugenics" on her Wikipedia article. Despite being factual and sourced to her own statements, Fleischman's followers went on to remove this from her article. Fleischman has called herself as a eugenicist, co-wrote a paper defending eugenics and spends much of her time defending it on YouTube podcasts and in blog posts.

External links

• Diana Fleischman vs. transgender people